It will be a much-welcomed result after the average 1.9 per cent loss recorded by super funds in 2011.

Even the worst-performing fund of 2012 eked out a 9.7 per cent return, Chant West said.

Scott Tully, head of investment services at Colonial First State, attributed the strong performance to the fund’s asset mix. About 80 per cent of the portfolio is invested in so-called growth assets, including shares and listed property and infrastructure. Australian shares comprise 32.4 per cent of the fund, while international equities make up 28.6 per cent of the total. Listed property and infrastructure funds comprise 13 per cent of the fund.

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“When markets do well our fund will outperform," said Mr Tully, noting that one of Colonial First State’s local property managers, Renaissance, returned 37.6 per cent, well above the 32.8 per cent average gain for Australian real estate investment trusts.

Chant West director Warren Chant said members should be pleased with the latest results.

“This is the third positive calendar year return in the past four and the eighth positive year in the past 10. Since the shock 21.5 per cent loss in 2008, which came during the height of the global financial crisis, balanced funds have returned 7.3 per cent per annum over the subsequent four calendar years. That’s a cumulative gain of 32.7 per cent," Mr Chant said. He added that last year’s figures served as a warning to investors to be patient and not to try to “time" markets.

“If you’d got nervous at the end of 2011 after a negative year and with so much uncertainty in the air, you might have been tempted to switch to cash. If so, you’d have missed out on the bounce-back in growth markets and ended up considerably worse off, because cash produced the worst return of all asset sectors," he said.

Other funds at the top of the 2012 league table included Unisuper’s balanced option, AXA Super Directions Balanced, Russell Balanced and BT Multi-Manager Balanced. All four recorded gains of 14.3 per cent or higher.

Mr Tully said he had no plans to alter CFS FirstChoice Growth’s strategy of investing heavily in listed assets, noting the asset mix was a “point of differentiation" for Colonial, which is a subsidiary of Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

Investing mainly in liquid assets enabled the fund to rebalance its investments regularly to ensure the asset mix was in line with the scheme’s objective, while it also meant that members were treated equitably, Mr Tully said.

“In times of distress, it is hard to ensure members are treated equitably because prices of [illiquid] assets do not necessarily reflect their current values," Mr Tully said.He said he was optimistic for markets in 2013.

Although problems may still arise in Europe and the United States, low interest rates should help to boost share prices.